In politics,
you can't even stop with just one person telling lies. There have to be new
people, telling new lies, to back up the old lies.

Thus the corruption that started in the White House and spread into the
court rooms has now spread right into the House Judiciary Committee itself,
where defenders of the president have created a whole new pattern of
deception, to try to stave off impeachment.

Much political melodrama has been made out of the fact that there has been
no cross-examination of Linda Tripp, Monica Lewinsky and others whose
testimony and evidence have been used in making the case for impeachment.

What makes all this pure hogwash is that the right to cross-examine accusers
is a right that applies in trials -- and the very people who are arguing
this way are precisely the same people who are trying to prevent a trial
from taking place.

Impeachment is not a trial. A trial occurs in the Senate. Impeachment is
the very process of sending a case from the House to the Senate for trial.
Most Congressmen are also lawyers, so both sides know all this. But
demagogues are banking on the fact that most other people are not lawyers,
so they are hoping to get away with this latest deception in a long line of
deceptions.

When special prosecutor Kenneth Starr appeared before the House Judiciary
Committee for 12 hours, many irrelevant questions about minor figures were
asked by the president's defenders on the House Judiciary Committee. What
was the point? The point was to get videotape of Judge Starr saying "I don't
remember" -- and to use that to counter the fact that Bill Clinton has
repeatedly said "I don't remember" when questioned under oath.

The fact that Kenneth Starr, with a small army of attorneys and agents
working for him, does not remember all of the vast numbers of people
interviewed by his staff is hardly the same as Bill Clinton's not
remembering what happened with Monica Lewinsky. Starr never laid eyes on
many of the people his staff interviewed, much less got up close and
personal like Bill and Monica.

If you stop and think about it, the whole comparison is ridiculous. But
again, the demagogues and deceivers are banking on the fact that most people
aren't going to stop and think about it.

Another common argument that makes no sense when you stop and think about
it is that perjury and obstruction of justice "do not rise to the level of
an impeachable offense" because the underlying events were not that
important. By this reasoning, the case against Richard Nixon was even
weaker, because he had zero involvement in the underlying events that led to
the Watergate impeachment crisis.

Nixon didn't even know about the burglary at the Watergate hotel until
after it was over. But he obstructed justice to try to protect his people --
and he had to pay the price. The underlying events were not the issue.

White House lawyer David Kendall and White House aide Sidney Blumenthal
have both made charges against special prosecutor Kenneth Starr that they
both knew were false -- and these charges have found echoes among the
president's defenders in Congress and in the media. But what Kendall and
Blumenthal also knew was that the proof that these charges were false was in
sealed court records that Starr was forbidden to discuss.

When Kendall brought up one of these charges before the House Judiciary
Committee, the most that Starr could do was to give him a look and say:
"That is untrue and you know it is untrue." Now that the records have been
unsealed, we can all find out that it was untrue -- but who is going to
look, much less go back and correct the record?

Bill Clinton and his defenders do not care how many of their lies will be
exposed in some doctoral dissertation in history 50 years from now. Their
goal is to hang onto power right now, by hook or crook.

Former White House press secretary Mike McCurry said that his job was to
"tell the truth slowly." In other words, the White House understands clearly
that delaying the truth serves their political purposes, even if it is
impossible to keep the truth from coming out eventually.

Nothing reveals the utter bankruptcy of the president's case more than the
fact that his strongest defenders have to resort to confusing the
issues.